PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY AND REVIEW ; CONTAINING REPORTS OF THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE TWO HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT DURING THE SESSION OF 1825:—6 GEO. IV. WITH CRITICAL REMARKS ON THE PRINCIPAL MEASURES OF THE SESSION. LONDON: PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, REES, ORME, BROWN, AND GREEN, PATERNOSTER-ROW. M.DCCC.XXVI. ADVERTISEMENT. THE design of this work is to afford an annual record of the proceedings of the British Parliament, together with an examination of the principal topics discussed in that assembly, and of the manner in which its functions are performed. The wealth and power of Great Britain-the rank which she holds in the scale of national intelligence and the freedom of speech for which her legislative assemblies have been so long celebrated, render British history a matter of no ordinary interest and importance; and for this history the two Houses of Parliament must supply the most authentic as well as the most instructive materials. It is surprising, therefore, that the debates of the British Parliament have never yet been arranged for the purpose of examination or reference;-that they are only to be found in the chaotic miscellany of daily reports;-and that they have been subjected to no periodical comment more systematic or accurate than the brief and hurried remarks of a newspaper editor. The conductors of the present work have endeavoured to supply this remarkable deficiency in our periodical literature, and if they have only in a moderate degree succeeded in carrying their design into execution, they will have produced a work as novel as it is important. Some now living remember the sensation produced by the first appearance of the ANNUAL REGISTER; and if that work was deemed to have formed an epoch in the annals of literature, it is hoped that the present will be esteemed at least as striking an accession to the means of diffusing political knowledge. In the first place, all the debates on a given subject, after having been carefully revised and collated, have been collected under the general head to which they respectively belong; nothing being omitted but mere conversations, of no interest except at the moment of utterance; such as discussions regarding the day or hour at which a given debate should be entered on, questions of order, and the like. |